


Of Words and Actions

by sexonastick



Category: Lost
Genre: Alternate Timeline, Crimes, F/F, Femslash, Handcuffs, Road Trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-28
Updated: 2010-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-14 04:45:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sexonastick/pseuds/sexonastick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate has taken Claire hostage and Claire hasn't had the decency to run away yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Words and Actions

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the season six Sideways universe. This version of events branches off from what we saw in the season premier.
> 
> Originally written 2/13/10
> 
> Spoilers for 6x01/6x02, "LA X"

Her name isn't Joan, or Maggie. It isn't Lucy.

Her name isn't any of the things Claire's heard her say to strangers. That much is clear in how easily the words come out, how relaxed and almost normal they sound. Because _she_ isn't ever relaxed. Claire is sure by now that she doesn't know how to be, even if she pretends it well.

When they're with other people, other strangers, she does everything exactly how she should. She smiles, she laughs. She talks to people and really seems to listen, but Claire sees the way her eyes are always checking the corners, watching the exits.

It's different when they're alone. She is still when she's with Claire in a way that she isn't with others around, contained inside herself. If what she does in front of the world is a performance, then this time they spend alone in a hotel room is the backstage with makeup all scrubbed off.

The room is dim, with only one light on. She likes it best this way and while Claire sits on the bed watching TV, she keeps perched near the window with eyes on the road.

"No glare," she says on the first night when she turns off the light overhead, leaning past Claire to turn on another by the bedside. Her hair smells like cigarettes from the bar she stopped in earlier. She went in alone to keep Claire and the baby away.

She has begun to say "the baby" so often that now Claire says it too; and sometimes she even finds herself thinking "Aaron."

Claire catches her hand, pressing it flat against her tummy, and says, "Can't you feel Aaron kick?"

But she flinches away.

Each car that passes by lights up her face, casting shadows in the hollows of her eyes. She doesn't smile when she thinks no one is watching and when they're alone she doesn't see Claire clearly enough to know that eyes are on her.

 

*

Claire Littleton. Mother in a coma, lying about her father. Boyfriend left her, new parents for her baby fell through, and she hasn't got anyone left to notice or care how stuck and fucked up she is.

Kid's still young, but maybe she's gotten just old enough not to know how to learn her lesson. She shares herself too easily, like she doesn't remember or understand what pain is -- its purpose. Pain is a warning. It's evolution telling you to get the fuck out, to run.

But every time Kate gets back to the car to find her still there, smile on her face. She sips slushie through a straw and says, "You want some? Cherry."

"No, thanks."

Claire winces whenever a car turns too fast, moves too close, and Kate thinks for a moment she should try to smile or crack a joke to relax her, take Claire's mind off her mother, but it's not her fucking job to play babysitter.

She gives the kid a ride; she watches her back. What more can she do? Coddle her too much and she'll never learn.

"I'm not sure you really understand our arrangement," Kate says one day over dinner in the hotel room. They're having Chinese because Claire likes it and so does the baby.

He kicks somewhere around the fifth mouthful and Claire asks Kate to touch her belly for the second time this week, which is finally taking things way too far. "I don't think," Kate says then, "you really _get_ what's going on here."

"Well." Claire chews her lip and pokes her noodles and rice around with her chopsticks. "You broke the law-- or at least, the police _think_ you did and it must have been something very important for them to follow you through so many states."

When Claire looks at Kate the way she is right now, it's almost unsettling. Usually her smile is content, calm, but now she looks at Kate like she's looking through her. She smiles with sharp edges like a smirk, like she sees everything that Kate is and was, what she will be and what she's done and will do. As if Claire already knows that Kate, like everyone else, is going to end up leaving.

Like maybe Claire has finally learned her lesson about life, love, and expectations, but instead she just says; "And since I'm with you, I guess I'm breaking the law too. Guess you're stuck with me."

Kate looks away to keep from speaking. Instead she chews and watches cars pulling in and out of the parking lot. They all have places they're leaving but also somewhere to get to. They have destinations.

She wonders what that feels like.

 

*

Claire teaches her how to use chopsticks and about keeping your dark clothes bright. For such a high living fast travelling criminal, there are so many things she doesn't seem to know.

What sort of person lives their life out of a car that comes packed with a spare pair of handcuffs just for emergencies, but no detergent?

"It's organized," she says when Claire asks if she remembered to bring either toothbrush; "I bring the important things. The things I need for me."

"So that's a no, right?"

"That's 'I was too busy protecting your ass to remember.' I don't know."

Claire doesn't point out that it's not actually her ass on the line, not her who needs protection or her baby. That this, all of this, is being done for the almost stranger in the seat beside her.

She doesn't say and maybe that's because repeating it aloud would force her to realize just what she's doing, how crazy it is.

This is crazy. _She_ is probably crazy and Claire's even worse for following. Sometimes she almost knows it too, but all she says is, "Don't expect me to stand too close until you buy a new one."

"Oh, yes ma'am."

 

*

Kate's father -- the real father who raised her and not the piece of shit she buried under concrete and fumes -- was a soldier who taught her right from wrong. Her father served the people as well as his country and for a while when she was young, little Katie wanted to grow up to be a cop. She wanted to serve other people, to be brave and make her daddy proud.

You don't usually get to do things exactly how you wish and a lot of the time it doesn't even come close, but she still gets to play with handcuffs.

"Now, you stay here--"

"You aren't leaving me with a lot of options really."

Kate wonders how she must look to Claire now -- grinning and all teeth -- because she has to admit she's enjoying the view from her end, the way the flush rises up in Claire's cheek when she's frustrated and sulking.

The pale pulse inside her wrist in marked contrast with the restraint.

"Look, consider it a compliment." Kate pulls Claire's wallet from her front pocket and stows it in her own. "I'm making believe you've got self-preservation instincts. You should be flattered."

"Oh boy."

She's parked in the shade, and she's only going to be a few minutes. Half hour at most. Kate has a phone call to make and she can't let the kid get caught up in any more of her own mess.

"What should I be afraid of, _Joan_?" Claire presses at the steering wheel just long enough to get Kate to wince, to look back.

Claire leans her head out the window, eyes shinning in the squint of the sunlight that reflects off of other passing cars, and says, "Should I be afraid of _you_?"

_Yes_ , Kate thinks, _she finally gets it_ , but all she says is, "Keep your head inside the car until I get back."

 

*

If Claire is totally honest with herself, she's been kidnapped. They aren't friends on an exotic road trip across the United States or partners in crime. _She_ isn't a criminal, not really, and probably never could be. She hasn't got the stomach for it.

She likes to imagine she could be something or someone like that. She imagines herself as brave and steady. She imagines she could be like-- her. Whoever she is, the stranger in the bed beside her. But the truth is that she isn't and never can be. She hasn't any time to reinvent herself.

She has her child and more and more he is becoming real to her. She worries about _Aaron_ and what this woman will do when his time really comes. It won't be long now.

And then one day she doesn't have to wonder, because he's almost here, he's coming.

The mattress is wet and her sheets are slippery with sweat, palms aching from twisting in them. The woman is up and alert. She's pacing but doesn't answer when Claire screams.

It must be her that's screaming; the noise has to come from somewhere and that stranger's mouth is a single tense line. This woman stranger who spends her nights so close and still and her days ever looking for an exit paces in front of the doorway now, her hands jerking as if to reach for the doorknob.

"Don't you dare," Claire says, because it must be her who says it, the way her throat burns raw with every word. The sound is in her whole head, her blood and the pressure in her chest. "Don't you leave me now, don't you _dare_."

The woman sways in front of the door, liquid and shimmery in the blinking back of Claire's sharp tears, but her movement stops. Again, she is still, as if emptied out and waiting for -- something. Whatever comes next.

She needs her role, her part to play, but the only thing Claire has to offer is a hand, shuddering; "Don't _leave_ me."

The hand clasping hers should have a stronger grip. Logic says that her grip should be firm, steady, but she is stiff and awkward. All the technique and skill Claire has seen her show with a gun or a lock is gone now and she is mumbling.

Her voice is so quiet, and Claire can't hear a thing through the sobs, the wrenching groans and the slap of the headboard when her body shifts all on its own. She gasps, gripping the woman's hand tighter.

"Shhh," the stranger says, voice far away and quiet. "It's okay," she says. Her eyes are steadier than her touch. Her eyes are like stone, resolved, and then her hands move quicker too.

"I know what I'm doing," she says in the voice she uses with others. It's the voice she gives to bartenders and to gas store clerks.

It's the sound of make believe and swagger, but Claire is grateful for the chance to pretend. She'll believe if it helps ease even a little of the pain and fear that's clawing in her chest. "Right."

Claire swallows hard, not wanting to loosen her grip but eventually relenting when the woman pulls away.

"I'm not leaving," she says, standing up and her voice drifting away. "I'm right here, okay?"

"You can't go." The sweat in Claire's eyes makes it hard to track her movements and eventually she closes them, shivering with the shock of an open door and sudden wind; " _No_."

But the voice from the doorway is calm, confident and smooth. "Hey, I'm here. I'm right here. I'll be _right back_."

"No," Claire repeats, shaking her head violently. All of her is shaking now, even her legs when she tries to stand and falls back to the edge of the bed. "No, you can't-- you--"

Her arms are as strong as they look like they should be. When Claire starts to sway, she is there to catch her, to hold her.

It isn't the restraining grip she's used before. She is gentle now. Claire wouldn't have guessed she knew how to be so gentle.

"I said, okay? Right here. I've _got_ you, Claire, but you have to trust me."

The thought makes Claire laugh somehow, a sharp and quick sound, nearly giddy. Her head is so light and her thoughts are almost careless as if she's been drugged. And maybe she has been. " _Trust_ you?" For all she knows, this woman could be grinding up pills to slip into her meals. Claire wouldn't know whether it's the sort of thing for _her_ to do or not. The thought makes her laugh again, saying, "I don't _know_ you."

The heat of another body at her back, at first a comfort, now feels suffocating. Claire can smell the sweat of her, this other woman, on her skin and in her hair as she bends down close to Claire's face. Her mouth is almost against Claire's cheek, so close.

She smells like gasoline and the orange juice from breakfast. Her lips are chapped when they graze Claire's skin, just against her ear, voice so close it almost comes from inside her.

_Kate_ , the voice says, _my name's Kate._

So close her heart is pounding against Claire's back thick and heavy enough for her to know that the performance might be practiced but this new exposure isn't. This is something real. It isn't the actor or the shell. This is _her_. This real woman.

This Kate.

"Now I'm going to go grab some things, alright? So we can do this right."

"Okay," says Claire's voice, but her hand hasn't let go of her -- of _Kate's_ \-- shirt. "Okay," she says again. "Alright."

The body behind her shifts. She's moving slowly still, gently. "I'm scared too," Kate says in that same quiet voice, as if their bodies are still pressed close together even as she steps for the door. "But I'll be right back, and then you and I can say hello to Aaron, okay? _Together_. Okay?"

"Okay," whispers Claire, feeling smaller now and drained of so much emotion. Maybe all that's left of her is shifting itself into Aaron, leaving her empty and waiting.

Looking at Kate now in the doorway, confident and ready, she wonders if that would be such a bad thing.

"Thank you." Claire swallows, tries to smile but it comes as a wince instead. "Kate."


End file.
